THE whimsicality of the English imagination offers many pitfalls to
earnest Celtic sensibilities. What is one to make of its Teutonic sense
of humour, its buffoonish sense of tragedy, the solemn response to banality,
the frivolous wince at significance? It is so foreign, so flighty, so,
in the end, unreliable. When John Major offered us his vision of Tory England
- friendly folk watching cricket over a glass of beer - he sounded sincere
enough.

But against the fading memory of his back-stabbing, bribe-taking, alcopopping,
positively Neapolitan administration, it suggests an unsuspected but pretty
gift for irony. Or take Evelyn Waugh's accolade to PG Wodehouse - the master
of English literature. A tremendous tease it was thought, and one that
hooked poor Sean O'Faolain, who responded indignantly that the eunuchoid
genius was no more than the performing flea of English literature. At which
Waugh plonkingly insisted that the tribute had been entirely serious, thereby
leaving everyone, including Wodehouse, unsure whether to wipe the smile
off their faces or snigger into their sleeves.

So what is to be made of Julian Barnes' first novel in six years? Its
author is intelligent, sophisticated, civilised beyond fault, the nearest
thing to a genuine "man of letters" England can presently boast. The style,
as always reflecting Barnes' love of French literature, is distanced, amused
by the human condition, and interested in exploring an idea at the expense
of character. But the story he tells is a farce with a dated plot and a
leaning to slapstick that might have come from Tom Sharpe. It begins with
a dazzling riff on the unreality of memory, as Martha Cochrane strives
to recall the first thing she could really remember. "If a memory wasn't
a thing but a memory of a memory of a memory, mirrors set in parallel,
then what the brain told you now about what it claimed had happened then
would be coloured by what had happened in between. It was like a country
remembering its history: the past was never just the past, it was what
made the present able to live with itself."

Martha, alas, is left on the margins of the story. Into the centre comes
Sir Jack Pitman, England's richest man, who decides to create an idealised
replica of his country on the Isle of Wight. A mixture of theme-park and
living history, it has all the Robin Hood, Dr Johnson, and Horse Guards
on parade stuff, even the SAS storming the Iranian embassy, but none of
the original's buggery, perfidy and snobbery. To ensure these standards
of behaviour are maintained, every citizen of his regnum in regno (hence
the doubled title) is on Sir Jack's payroll, and liable to dismissal for
failure to perform according to script. A substantial transfer fee persuades
the king - the story is set at least two royal generations down the line
- to swap Buckingham Palace for Osborne House on the island and, buoyed
by huge tourist revenues, England seems destined to flourish forever. What
threatens to undermine it is the difficulty of distinguishing replica from
real, so that eventually, the actor playing Dr Johnson is incapacitated
by melancholia and Hood cannot help robbing the rich.

The intrinsic farce keeps erupting, notably in a battle between Robin
Hood's effeminate Merry Men in green tights supported by Maid Marian's
band of infinitely tougher dykes and the mincing gymnasts of the replica
SAS squad. But where a real farceur, like Sharpe, would have stuffed the
episode with absurdity until it spread out over a chapter and the reader
ached with laughter, Barnes finishes it off in a scant three pages, and
wins a smile. The publishers claim the novel to be "a bitingly funny satire"
(there's nothing more fly than a flyleaf) but Barnes is more feline than
mordant, and his targets (the arrogance of the rich and the absurdity of
the heritage business) get off with barely a scratch.

His real aim is, I suspect, more serious - to explore the philosophical
distinction between the real and the replica or, in this case, its representation
in memory or history. Neither is ever reliable, he concludes, only the
effort that goes into creating them. Or as Martha puts it: "The seriousness
lay in celebrating the original image, getting back there, seeing it, feeling
it."

The end-result defies easy labelling. Suppose that Passport to Pimlico
had been filmed by Jean-Luc Godard; that would be close to it. A neo-existentialist
comedy then? I think English whimsy. Still, the publishers are going to
town on it. They, at least, are being deadly serious. - Aug 27